as a canadian i concur with all the postal frustration. however. i just sent 2 small packets to aus and they both arrived in 2 weeks-ish. it may be a size thing. big parcels long time, small parcels short time.

i had a package take a day to get to the us i had another package take almost 5 weeks to get to the us. it's random. but wont stop me swapping... its also one of the main reasons i always send early.

I've had an issue with this in another swap and was going to post on this board - then I found this thread.

If you can't send airmail, maybe consider not sending internationally. Surface/seamail take MONTHS because they travel by truck/boat and spend much longer in warehouses/shipping containers. My post generally takes 12-14 days to get to its international destination as long as I send airmail.

I won't be sending to the USA because of the extra post charge that applies from Australia or Japan, so I think it's ok to ask not to have a partner from specific countries for postal reasons.

i have had air mail packages take up to 8 weeks to get to austraila as well. when i asked. the one postal worker was shocked. the other...not at all. while the delivery guidelines may say one thing, in reality, it's a crap shoot. i could send airmail. but, why on earth would i pay an extra 30 bucks with NO guarantee. (and for a tracking number for a small package (under a kg)the price hops up0 to around a hundred bucks.) this may be just a canada post thing. but it seems like if i save that 30 bucks it's one more swap for me to be in. it gets there in the end. and if people dont want to swap with me cause i ship from canada... well. almost every swap has the option to not ship internationally.

Like schnerby, I think it would be totally okay if you said, you'd only ship to other countries on the same continent, or something like: anywhere but the following countries. Every swap organizer would be so happy NOT to have packages out for months.

Every swap organizer would be so happy NOT to have packages out for months.

So true! If you can only send surface mail I'd really encourage you not to swap to those places effected. I know it kinda sucks to have to say that, but putting a package out seamail causes a whole lot of headaches for the organisers who eventually get chased up by the mods for the swap taking so long. Also, if it does go missing the swap could blow out to months.

That's exactly what happened to the Mini Make a Friend swap, where two packages were sent to the partners, and the first package from CAN took three months... we still haven't seen the second one which had to be angeled for... I would so understand it if it was for the earthquake in NZ, but this seems to be a problem in general.